Unlike other methods which incorporate expensive and bulky high voltage electronics to merge droplets using electrostatic forces, the Droplet Merger Chip works by simply “squeezing” droplets together in a carefully designed merging chamber.

The result is a unique microfluidic device, which points the way to low cost disposable chips in future versions.

“A simple and reliable droplet merging technology is an important step forward for us”, said Dr. David Johnson, CEO and founder of GigaGen Inc., adding “We are now using these chips in our game-changing system for massively parallel single cell genetic analysis.”

GigaGen Inc. filed a patent application describing the chip design and its applications in the field of genetic analysis of cells.

As part of a license agreement with GigaGen Inc., Dolomite will be offering the technology later this year to research users in academia and commercial users in a wide range of application areas.

“Many of our customers have asked us for chips to create droplets, merge them, and then carry out further processing and analysis”, commented Dr. Andrew Lovatt, CEO of Dolomite.

Dr. Lovatt continued, “Our partnership with Sphere Fluidics gives us additional capability in selecting the surfactants we use, to optimize droplet behaviour and stability under a wide range of temperature and biological conditions.”

The microfluidic device with interlinking modules containing human-derived heart, liver, skeletal muscle and nervous system cells was able to maintain cellular viability and record cellular function in real-time for 28 days.